Best test devices for game development

Recently I had a task to select Android phones to buy to extend company’s test device list. To be more precise, I had to select 4-6 phones that will cover most of the possible hardware configurations (screen size, GPU vendor, etc.). Taking into account that mainly we make games using Unity 3D.

Why is it important to test on devices with different GPUs?

If we’re talking about iOS, this question doesn’t make sense because all iPhones and iPads use PowerVR GPUs. But Android devices can be powered by Adreno, Tegra, Mali or PowerVR GPUs. These differ in texture formats and how alpha is handled. Moreover they all have different drivers and shader compilers. Unity documentation recommends using ETC texture compression, which is supported by all Android devices. But in some cases it’s possible to achieve better performance using other compression format adopted for certain GPU.

Market research results

According to statistics from AppBrain for today the most popular Android phones are:

First one was selected to list because of almost square screen that allows to test your UI on non-standard proportions. Also, it’s good to have Amazon device if you’ll decide to publish a game to their store.

According Nvidia Shield, it is the perfect device to test user interaction with game controller.

Do you use other devices for game testing? Share your list in the comments.

About

Hi, my name is Vitaliy. My background includes mobile application and game development, tech leadership and conference organization. Nowadays, I'm leading development of the next generation in-app marketing tools at the Dutch startup GetSocial. I'm a frequent speaker at conferences, an active member of various technical communities and a founder of the Google Developers Group Lviv.